NASSAU, BAHAMAS — The Ministry of Environment and Department of Environmental Health Services launched phase one of their clean-up initiative last month continuing a long-term government plan to improve the state of various communities.
Environmental Health Director, Melony McKenzie says it’s a one-time cleanup where they plan to educate and provide persons in communities with the tools needed to dispose of trash then further encourage and promote maintenance of the community and private property.
“It’s a phased project we expect that in the first phase on our part it will probably cost about 700, 800 thousand dollars […] its five constituencies in the first phase,” she said.
“It is going to be a comprehensive program and once they are finished with an area and we are out of that area and the teaching goes on.
“We’re going to also try to ensure that persons who are in the community who ought to have bins who don’t have bins that they have bins,” McKenzie said.
The cleanup will start off with various groups in different zones of Fox Hill, Free Town, Fort Charlotte, Bain and Grants Town, Centerville, and Englerston.
She continued: “First we are going to move cars and get the cars out the way because it’s very difficult to do what you need to do if you have all these derelict cars blocking up every place, we’ve begun to move the cars already.
“So over the next two weeks we’re going to take cars from those five constituencies in our third and fourth week we will begin to move the waste, we will go house to house street to street and say to persons we are encouraging you to put out waste.”
McKenzie added that they will be encouraging people as they move along with their clean-up crews to bring their large derelict items, like vehicles, refrigerators, and stoves in the front of their yards for collection.
In addition to these strategies, she says that they will conduct tree cutting and are especially focused on assisting those who are incapable of getting rid of the waste on their own, like the elderly and disabled persons.
“We cannot expect that we can continually clean the property if there is no way to recover the cost. That first cleanup is fine but anything outside of that has to be the responsibility of the owner and it’s important for owners to recognize that they do have a certain amount of responsibility” McKenzie said.
In that breath, she is encouraging owners of enclosed properties to check on them to make sure they are properly maintained.
“So some of our cost is because we have to rent large bins to allow for rapid movement of waste so that we don’t have the streets with 30 trucks trying to get to the disposal site.
“Rather than that we use 30 cubic yard bins, which allows for those smaller trucks to go in and deposit the waste in those bins and then one truck then carry that accumulated waste and not have the roads clogged up with 30 – 40 people trying to transport all at once,” she said.
McKenzie says although the project is broken down into phases and sub-phases it will require a lot of manpower, she says the Ministry has reached out to various civic groups and community organizations, inviting them to partner with them in the cleanup initiative. She says beyond the organization, people in the communities are also encouraged to help in the cleanup.
“We’re not here to clean up for you were here to assist you in a cleanup […] and you would find that once people, the communities help in the cleanup that community stays basically clean,” McKenzie said.
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